page_title: Kenworthy Hall
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Kenworthy Hall / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Kenworthy Hall, State Highway 14 (Greensboro Road), Marion, Perry County, AL. FIRST FLOOR CENTRAL HALLWAY, LOOKING TO CROSS HALL AND STAIR. (COLOR DUPLICATE OF HABS No. AL-765-59) al93.
context_page_description: Kenworthy Hall, also known as the Carlisle-Martin House, Carlisle Hall and Edward Kenworthy Carlisle House, is a plantation house located on the north side of Alabama Highway 14, two miles west of the Marion courthouse square. It was built from 1858 to 1860 and is one of the best preserved examples of Richard Upjohn's distinctive asymmetrical Italian villa style. It is the only surviving residential example of Upjohn's Italian villa style that was especially designed to suit the Southern climate and the plantation lifestyle. It has a massive four-story tower, windows of variable size and shape with brownstone trim, and a distinctly Southern division of family and public spaces. The building was designed and constructed for Edward Kenworthy Carlisle as his primary family residence and the centerpiece of his 440-acre estate. It, along with some of its surrounding ancillary structures, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004. The house and a purported ghost are featured as a short story in Kathryn Tucker Windham's 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey.
context_section_description: Kenworthy Hall is closely related to a series of Italian villa style residences that Upjohn designed in the Atlantic Northeast, most notably the Edward King House in Newport, Rhode Island.  But in this house Upjohn designed a residence adapted to a hot, humid climate and a plantation lifestyle.  The most obvious adaptations were the wide cross hall at the rear of the main entrance hall, the detached kitchen, and the full width rear porch.  Edward Carlisle's correspondence with Upjohn stressed that the house use the finest materials and the best construction.  The house is built in brick, including the interior walls.  The original standing-seam terne roof survives to the present.  Kenworthy Hall features a partial basement, three separate stairways, three large hallways, seven major rooms on the first floor, six major rooms on the second floor, a large attic, a third floor tower room, and a fourth floor tower room.  Ancillary structures that contribute to the National Historic Landmark status of the house include the detached two-room brick kitchen, a brick smokehouse, a partially buried brick water cistern, and a brick and wood well house.  The house also originally had its own gas plant for gas lighting, though this is now marked only by a brick and brownstone platform.
  The exterior walls of the house are built from a dull red brick that was locally made.  The bricks are laid in a stretcher bond pattern, with belt courses of brownstone above the foundation and at each floor level.  The windows on the house, all sixty-four of them, feature brownstone headers and windowsills.  Most of them, except for those under the original first floor porches and in the kitchen building, feature round or segmental arches.  Brick panels are inserted below the windowsills of the parlor, sitting room, and all twelve of the fourth-floor tower windows.  The tower features a bracketed balcony at the second floor level, with a metal canopy roof.  This type of balcony was a signature of Upjohn's Italian villa style.  The roof is a low-pitched hipped and truncated structure with wide eaves.  The eaves have an overhang of three feet and are decorated by flat wooden brackets.  Two skylights, original to the house, are mounted on the flat portion of the roof.  The roof also features four brick chimneys, capped with brownstone and serving twelve fireplaces.
  The original porches, both originally referred to as piazzas, featured multiple arched wooden bays separated and supported by miniature Corinthian columns on pedestals.  The front piazza was replaced by a far simpler structure after 1912, the rear one was taken down in the 1940s and was never rebuilt.  Some of the components were stored at that time and have survived, with reconstruction contemplated by the current owners. The rear piazza originally connected to the detached kitchen by means of an elevated covered walkway, of a slightly simpler design than the piazzas.  The main entrance doors are set into a Serliana brownstone arch.  The doors are set under an arched glass fanlight with the sidelights placed in straight-topped transoms to either side. The front of the house also has a "family" entrance to the left of the tower, entered through a small arched loggia.  The rear elevation has a centrally placed set of entry doors that enter the building behind the main staircase.  The rear of the house also has an exterior service entry that opens into the servant's hallway and staircase.
  An extensive use was made in the interior of decoratively carved cabinetry, oak moldings, decorative plasterwork, and one of the Deep South's first uses of ornamental stained glass.  The stained glass is believed to have been produced by an early American ornamental stained glass company, that of Henry Sharp and Company of New York City.  It was featured in the arched transom and sidelights of the main doors, as well as the large arched window over the main staircase landing.  The glass was destroyed by vandals in the 1950s, as was many of the plasterwork ceiling medallions.  The entire house has original 5-inch
caption: View of the entrance hall, a portion of the cross hall, and the main staircase.
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